


Rebuilding

by Aramley



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21840757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: When Goodnight awoke the doctor of Rose Creek swore a blue streak and pronounced it a honest to God miracle, a genuine medical marvel: what the Gatling gun had failed to accomplish the drop from the church tower ought to have completed, but here was Goodnight Robicheaux in the land of the living with only a half dozen fresh holes in his body and a couple of broken bones to show for it.
Relationships: Goodnight Robicheaux/Billy Rocks
Comments: 16
Kudos: 136
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Rebuilding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PR Zed (przed)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/gifts).



When Goodnight awoke the doctor of Rose Creek swore a blue streak and pronounced it a honest to God miracle, a genuine medical marvel: what the Gatling gun had failed to accomplish the drop from the church tower ought to have completed, but here was Goodnight Robicheaux in the land of the living with only a half dozen fresh holes in his body and a couple of broken bones to show for it. Goodnight, hazy and dimmed with a pain through his whole body that came in thick red pulses from seemingly no point in particular, could not see that only was in any way the mot juste.

"He's a tenacious son of a bitch," said Sam Chisholm from over the doctor's shoulder, with an expression on his face that was nearer to uncomplicated joy than anything Goodnight remembered seeing previously.

Goodnight wasn't wholly clear on the sequence of events that had taken place between the fall and the waking, and the memories such as they were had the same scattershot quality of the Gatling gun. Only one thing seemed important.

"Billy," he said, with a voice that clawed up through his throat.

"Forgive me," said the doctory, drily. "I ought to say, two medical marvels."

Goodnight closed his eyes.

Later, perhaps that day or the next or the next - time seemed to have gained the same tidal elasticity of the pain in his body - they brought Billy in to see him. Emma Cullen pushed him in in a wheeled chair, Billy stiff-backed and bristling with the indignation of it, and the sight made Goodnight smile even as relief flooded warmly through him like a fresh bloodletting. He had not entirely believed until the moment he saw Billy's bruised, tired, and well-loved face that they had not been telling him comfortable lies.

"You're awake," Billy said. 

"Do you recall," Goodnight said, with effort, his voice still rasping and thin, "that time in Abileen, when those men recognised you, and they jumped you that night and beat the absolute living daylights out of you?"

Billy made a small, irritable noise.

"I bring it up," Goodnight said, "because I didn't believe it was possible, but I do believe you are in worse shape now than then."

You had to know Billy well to read the signs of amusement in him. Goodnight did. He saw them in the brief movement of Billy's mouth. He saw other things too: pain, and relief, and maybe the afterimage of a private fear allayed.

"You look like shit, too," Billy said.

Emma Cullen had discreetly withdrawn. Goodnight reached out the hand that was not splinted and wrapped and Billy caught it in his own and held onto it tightly, then tighter again, but the pain was a good pain.

It was not impossible to Goodnight that a man could survive the kind of grievous injury that he had apparently received - often enough on the battlefield he'd seen men screaming from injuries that had blasted their bodies near to smithereens. It only confused him that he had managed it, after the years of dreams and omens. The horrible death they had foretold had passed over him like the plague of Egypt, but what manner of sign on the door had marked him to be spared? 

-

Sam Chisolm stayed a week in Rose Creek and rode out when it seemed sufficiently unlikely that Goodnight would surprise them by dying after all. Vasquez went with him. Red Harvest had gone even before Goodnight was awake. Neither Goodnight nor Billy were riding out anywhere for a long while.

Little by little, slower than he'd have liked, Goodnight began to recover. He could sit up in bed, then in a chair like Billy's, then he could stand with the aid of a cane and a ready arm. In all this Billy was one step ahead of him: by the time he was mobile Billy was largely discharged from the doctor's care, more or less with the doctor's consent. Then he took charge of Goodnight. They were billeted in different houses, Goodnight on a cot in the doctor's study and Billy back in the hotel where they had stayed before the Battle of Rose Creek, but by the time Billy was able to get around without aid the distinction was largely academic and pretty much all the time they spent apart was sleeping. All the same, Goodnight missed him. It wasn't sex, exactly, that he craved, though as the pain began to be manageable his body started to remember that pleasure was a thing it could also produce. It came to him that prior to this convalescence the only time they had been apart in more years than Goodnight could recall was the night that Goodnight had left.

Billy's solicitude in this period annoyed and embarrassed him. It was one thing to chivvy Goodnight into drinking less, or to pass him opiate cigarettes, or to look over at him if a shot fired or a whip cracked and bring him back to the present with a touch or a word. It was another thing to help him into a clean shirt in the morning, or to let him lean heavily on a shoulder that was still bandaged itself.

"You ought to leave," Goodnight said one day, when the pain was bad and Billy had insisted on dragging him out for a walk despite the cane and the heavy limp he walked with now. Walk was a charitable term; shuffle-drag was closer to the truth, Goodnight thought. "God damn it, Billy."

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself," said Billy. 

"It ain't myself I feel sorry for, it's you. Stop a moment, stop, I can't go on," said Goodnight, hearing the edge of bitterness in his voice. "Lord knows if I could leave me, I would. I left you first, anyhow."

"You were coming back," said Billy. It was an argument they had rehashed plenty in the days since Chisolm had left.

"I wasn't," said Goodnight. "I was out of here, I was gone. I didn't look back."

"Yes, you did."

"I didn't - God damn it!" Goodnight threw the cane in the dust, and would have kicked it if he could. "There's a difference between what I intended to do and what I did."

"You want me to punish you for what you didn't do."

"Don't I deserve it?"

"No."

"Why?"

Billy shrugged. "Because it's stupid."

"It is not stupid. It is not stupid! God damn it, Billy: I ran away. I left Sam, and Rose Creek, all of you, to die. And you. The one person, the one thing in all the world that - and I left. You could have died."

"I almost died anyway, and you were there." Billy leaned down and picked up the cane. "So did you, as I remember."

"I," Goodnight began, and stopped, and looked away instead, eyes stinging with what he told himself was the heat and a brisk wind across the flat land. "Billy Rocks, you are without a doubt the most stubborn and aggravating son of a bitch in the entire god damn United States, and more than likely in god damn Korea moreover."

"Thank you," said Billy, drily. He held out the cane to Goodnight, who took it. The day was hot and sweat prickled under Goodnight's clothes, stung in the places where he was still healing. Billy touched his elbow, and they kept on walking together. They were heading in the direction of the graveyard, where Billy visited most days and Goodnight joined him when he could. It was a duty he paid to Faraday and Horne.

"Those men outside Abileen, the ones you talked about," Billy said, at last. "How come they didn't take me, when they got me?"

"That's not the same thing," Goodnight said.

"Why didn't they take me?"

"Because, as you well remember, I was extremely inebriated and the urge to urinate called me outside, where they were beating you," said Goodnight. There had been four of them, and he'd been so drunk he hadn't immediately realised that it was Billy they were beating on. Then he'd sobered up all at once.

"And?"

"And I shot them in the head," said Goodnight. 

"You shot them in the head," said Billy, satisfied. "Only time I ever knew you to use your gun on a person."

Some of the old anger came back to Goodnight, remembering it. You had to hate what you were shooting at, and Goodnight had hated them as soon as he'd seen - he hadn't even remembered to be afraid of his omens until he had Billy safely inside their hotel. They'd holed up there in Abileen while Billy's face swelled and purpled, until his ribs healed up enough that he could breathe right and stand without swaying. 

"Equal shares, Goody," Billy said, his hand warm and steady on Goodnight's arm. "Always has been. Always will be."

-

Most days the town rang with the sound of hammering and sawing, of slow recovery. Goodnight got to like it; it felt like an accompaniment to his own slow rebuilding. 

"You're welcome here as long as you need," Emma told them. "You were there for us in our hour of great need and we won't forget it."

Goodnight did not demur that he had not been, for the most part; that if a sudden attack of conscience had not made him turn back he might not have been there at all. Billy said nothing.

"Thank you, my dear," said Goodnight. "I fear that I at least will be trespassing a long while on your hospitality."

"The Elysium offered you rooms for as long as you want," Emma said. "But we thought, perhaps - well, there's a lot of empty places around here now, and maybe you might prefer that. The Taylor place, perhaps, out on the edge of town. Molly Taylor lived there with her husband, but she and her children went to her people down in Red River after - you know."

"Indeed," said Goodnight.

"It ain't a prime spot, but." Emma didn't exactly blush, but she was not exactly meeting Goodnight's eyes, either. "I figured you all might want the privacy."

So, they took the Taylor place.

The house was a simple affair, single-storied which suited Goodnight's splinted leg and cane. When they got there Goodnight realised that Emma's tact had gone beyond the veiled hints about their personal relations. The Taylor place was at the other end of town from the little graveyard where Faraday and Horne lay, and situated so that the buildings of Main Street largely blocked out the sight of the burned-out church tower. It was overlooked by no prying neighbour. The rooms were neat and simple, freshly cleaned and swept, freshly furnished with kind gifts from the grateful townspeople. Goodnight found himself touched.

When the door had closed and they were alone Billy and Goodnight stood in the little living area and looked at each other.

"Well," said Goodnight. For once he could not think of a single thing to say. "How about that."

The house had two rooms for sleeping, one for the Taylor parents and a smaller one for the Taylor children in which a second cot fit for a single person had been kindly provided. They bypassed it by unspoken agreement, and went to the bedroom with the double bed.

"Tired?" Billy asked, when Goodnight sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and tossed his crutch away.

"No," said Goodnight. He hooked the ankle of his good leg around Billy's calf and urged him closer. 

"You'll bust your stitches," Billy admonished, lightly, when Goodnight reached for him. 

"The hell with my stitches," said Goodnight, making inroads towards the goal of unbuckling Billy's belt.

Billy huffed a little breath of laughter. "You'll bust my stitches." 

But his hand had come up to rest very lightly on the top of Goodnight's head, a little scratch of nails against the scalp that was, simply, the best damn thing he had felt since coming to in a doctor's bed peppered through like a sieve with half his bones busted for good measure. Even better, he thought the odds were good that the bar for such feelings was about to raise significantly.

"Well." Goodnight leaned in and kissed Billy's stomach through his shirt, and got another delicious scrape for his trouble. "You'll have to hold very still then, won't you?"

-

The share of the money that Chisholm had left them was enough to live on until they were able to go back to their former occupation. The irony of paying their way in Rose Creek with the money that the citizens of Rose Creek had paid them for their protection did not pass Goodnight by. 

Neither of them being inclined to homemaking, they engaged a girl to come in and do a little cleaning and cooking for them, and Martha proved a sweet and blessedly incurious presence. She was charmed by Goodnight and was a little in love with Billy, a condition which left her almost entirely mute in his presence. Goodnight found this hilarious. When he became expansive in his amusement Billy occasionally espoused the wish that Goodnight would take a similar attitude. Then he usually found a way to ensure Goodnight stopped talking, if not entirely to silence him.

The luxury of the Taylor place in this respect astounded Goodnight. To have Billy nearly always within arm's reach and rarely without a reason to touch if he felt moved to it, to lie down with him at the end of every day. Goodnight no longer dreamed of the dark with the glint of watchful eyes in it, though this did not mean that his sleep was quiet: sometimes his dreams were filled with the hot rattle of the Gatling gun; sometimes he dreamed he had never turned back to Rose Creek in his hour of cowardice, and these dreams echoed with the silence of a wide world without Billy in it. 

Sometimes when he woke out of these dreams he reached for Billy and found the bed empty, for Billy had nightmares of his own now. When Billy was gone Goodnight usually found him outside, looking up at the stars.

"I don't want to talk about it," Billy said, when Goodnight came close.

"Might help," said Goodnight. He sat down close to Billy, so that their shoulders brushed. "I could help. Always helped me when you knew."

"I don't want you to know," said Billy, with a little emphasis on the you that gave Goodnight a hint of the substance of the dreams. 

Goodnight considered. "You could tell me so I don't understand."

"What?"

"Tell me in Korean. God knows I never could get more than hello."

Billy looked at him like he was crazy. "You want me to tell you about my dreams in a language you don't even speak."

"I want to help you," said Goodnight. "I'm just throwing out ideas, here."

Billy snorted. "Go back to bed, Goody."

"Alright." He squeezed Billy's shoulder once, and left him there. 

He didn't hear Billy come back to bed, but he woke again in the palest grey before the dawn with his face pressed against Billy's arm, and Billy was speaking to him, softly, in a voice just above a whisper. The words were fast and melodic, and at first Goodnight thought he was just too close to sleep to understand them, before he understood that Billy was speaking to him in Korean. 

-

Sam Chisolm came back through town nearly six months after the Battle of Rose Creek. Vasquez wasn't with him; they had parted ways somewhere around Kansas. He hadn't heard from him since, but the bounty on Vasquez was still posted current in every warrant office Sam had been into and he figured that was a kind of good news. Red Harvest he had seen once, months ago, out west, but he showed no intention of coming back.

"Nice place you got here," Sam said, looking appreciatively around the Taylor house. He grinned slyly. "Real domestic."

"Any more of your lip and we'll send Martha home early and I'll cook for you like the old days," said Goodnight. "You still prefer your canned beans charcoaled, right?"

Sam stayed a few days and Goodnight saw the town freshly through his eyes. There was a steely resolve about the place, an insistence on life that Goodnight had come to love. In the autumn all the working men had come together to pull the burned-out church down and a new one stood half-finished in its place, giving off a clean smell of sawn wood. The prairie grass was growing over the graves of Faraday and Horne. 

When Sam left Goodnight examined himself for the desire to move on too and found himself strangely lacking in it. 

"We could go," he said to Billy, the first night Sam was gone. "If you wanted. I could ride now, if I had to. We could go."

Billy shrugged, one-shouldered, without looking up. The lines of his face were sharpened softened by the lamplight, the rich darkness of his hair and eyes accentuated. 

"I'm good here," he said. "If you are."

Goodnight decided to take that as the truth.

-

A week after Sam left, Emma and Teddy came to call.

"We have a proposition for you," Emma said, looking between Goodnight and Billy. "For you both."

Goodnight bit down on an inappropriate remark about how Emma Cullen's propositions usually turned out for Billy and himself. 

"Rose Creek's been without its lawmen a long time now," said Teddy. "And, well. We can offer you both a salary, Mister Rocks, Mister Robicheaux. On behalf of the town, we'd like to ask you to stay."

"I can understand if you don't want to take it," said Emma. "But there are more bad men than Bart Bogue in the world. And Rose Creek owes you both more than we can ever repay."

"You all know that Billy here is technically an outlaw and I am not what you'd call strictly on the level," said Goodnight, looking between them. "Are you sure you want us for the position?"

"Both of you are part of this town now," said Emma. "That's true whether you take the job or not. But there's nobody we'd rather trust with Rose Creek, sirs."

"Well." Goodnight looked at Billy. "What do you say?"

"I say yes," Billy said, and that was that. 

The job came with badges - badges! Goodnight could not stop looking at his, thinking that in the course of what had already been a pretty strange life this was surely the strangest twist of all.

In their bedroom that night, Goodnight laid the badges side by side on the dresser. 

"Billy," he said. "I do believe we have become respectable."

Billy, unbuckling his belt, snorted.

"All right, all right," Goodnight said. He turned and reached for Billy. "Perhaps not entirely, yet."


End file.
